In a sales transaction, a vendor provides a good or service (i.e., a product) to a customer in exchange for a specified amount of currency. The currency may be real (e.g., recognized by one of the world governments) or virtual (e.g., used by a particular institution or game). For example, a customer may eat food at a restaurant. In exchange, the customer may pay twenty dollars for the food and the service. When the customer receives a bill stating the total, the customer selects a payment option to pay the total. A payment option specifies how the customer elects to pay for the good or the service. For example, the customer may pay with a specific credit card, debit card, check, or any other type of payment option. Customers may even have multiple payment options in each category. For example, with regards to credit cards, the customer may have a Visa® Credit Card, two different MasterCard® Credit Cards, an American Express® Credit Card, and other such credit cards. (Visa® is a registered trademark of Visa, Inc., located in San Francisco, Calif.; MasterCard® is a registered trademark of MasterCard Worldwide located in Purchase, N.Y.; American Express® is a registered trademark of American Express Company, located in New York, N.Y.).
When the customer selects the payment option, the customer may desire to consider the costs and benefits of using the payment option for the particular type of sales transaction. The costs and benefits are typically defined in a contract that the customer signs when creating an account with a financial institution that provides the payment option. For example, the contract may include a reward package for using the payment option, interest rates on credit based purchases, provisions relating to particular vendors or types of vendors, and other such provisions. The benefits may change over time, such as when the rewards program is revolving or when the financial institution changes the contract.
Because of the contract, the customer may desire to select the most preferred payment option to pay the bill. However, the customer typically does not remember all of the provisions of the contract before selecting the payment option. Thus, the payment option that the customer selects is the payment option that the customer only believes to be preferred (e.g., the payment option that seems to be optimal, provide the best rewards, provides most benefits, provides most value, etc.). The selected payment option may or may not be, in fact, optimal.